Saturday, October 06, 2007

Magic

Gosh, it's been a long time; I hadn't realised...

And all of a sudden, it's autumn... My veg. box has started arriving with interesting squash in it; and while I was heading off to Sew Creative after work on Thursday, I found five beautiful shelled conkers under one of the horse-chestnut trees on Christ's Pieces. Either I was never that good a conker connoisseur (very probable) or I can feel very old and blame Kids These Days. Either way, I couldn't resist bringing them home... (Who shells conkers and then just leaves them there? someone more public-spirited than me, anyway...)

My Knitting from Your Stash ended at the end of September. I must confess here that I started falling a month or so before, but it's been a very trying summer, and towards the end I needed Treats... But they still had Apache in the £1 stand outside Sew Creative, so I picked up the last half dozen balls, and some Sirdar Click DK to make up something for my cousins' baby Oliver for Christmas.

The trying time is, however, over. I've never blogged much about my job, and I'm not intending to start now; just to say that I'm about to go back to actual Libraries, and more specifically the one here. So I will become a Commuter with a Proper Job, and with any luck I'll get some dedicated knitting/reading time on trains too... It'll be almost exactly 4 months from the offer date to the start date, and I've been living in limbo between the two all summer... I'm intending to take a week's holiday between jobs; I'm still trying to decide between a couple of days away on a cheap flight somewhere, and a week at home knitting, drinking tea, reminding the cat of who I am before I take off again...

I've knitted a couple of things I can display (I've knitted quite a lot of stuff, in fact, but either I've failed to photograph it or it's still secret): a BSJ for my ex-boss Sophie's baby Linus (I had a very beautiful blanket in the wings, but somehow, giving a blanket to a baby called Linus?...) This is a ball of the rainbow Trekking with a couple of strands of a very fine navy blue machine-knitting yarn from a cone; makes about a 19" chest measurement when combined, and I had the buttons in stash...

and tonight while watching The West Wing with Sue, who was finishing the curly edging on another beautiful scarf, I finished the main body of the knitting on Fiona's birthday bag (Gryffindor bag from here).

Completely addictive. I started this at about 9pm last night, and cast it off about 24 hours later. I think I've got a two-colour circular knitting thing going on. Endpaper mitts next, I think - they've been in the queue for some time and I can think of a giftee... And I may need to revise some of the kids' Christmas present ideas...

But the title of this post is because of this which I picked up at the miraculously-revived Cambridge Fopp on Thursday lunchtime - and which is, in my opinion, extraordinarily fine, even by the Boss's standards. I was a bit scared when january one was a little lukewarm about it; but there are only three artists whose CDs I'll buy sight unseen, and I'm glad I went with my instinct again this time. It's got a new Big Sound about it, to be sure, but it's also got a combination of the out-of-season-walking-the-boardwalk-looking-at girls element; the slightly-scary-guy-Nebraska element; the I-wish-I-were-Elvis element; the what-the-hell's-he-on-about-here-I-need-to-listen-to-the-interviews element; the religious-sexual-imagery element; and overarching everything, some beautiful melodies; and the E-Street Band... so you've got Clarence's sax floating across it all at just the point you hope for it; and the mad keyboards, and even the bloody sleigh-bells sound appropriate... Oh well. It's been on autorepeat here for two days. I'm not sure the cat's as keen on it as I am but maybe there's just a colony of endangered tiny rodents nearby she's intent on wiping out... that'd do it...

Totally adore the BSJ and am glad to hear that the waiting is over! One of my recent trips to Sew Creative was combined with conker-collecting, too. There's a fantastic tree just outside Jesus College and I went past during high winds which had obligingly shaken and shelled about 30 of the beauties. These went straight into my bag of yarn as they're said to deter moths.

Congrats on the new job! That sounds exciting, except for the commuting part... And I can tell you who leaves piles of what we boring types just call chestnuts: kids who have already brought billions home and finally their moms tell them NO MORE!